"Invoking the Light" by C.F. Reynolds

[Ed Augusts]

REVIEW of :"INVOKING THE LIGHT" by Catherine F. Reynolds

A Source Of Light Traveling Across the Often-
Hostile Desert

Catherine.F. Reynolds stopped by our place yesterday on her book tour
of the Western United States promoting her book, "Invoking the Light",
published by PowerLight Enterprises, in 2005. If you're surprised
that she is heavily promoting her 2005 book in 2008, this is because
she is making the promotion of this book and the divine invocation
which is at the heart of it, her life purpose. It takes a stalwart
and adventurous "in-your-face" kind of salesmanship to market books
these days, not to mention religious systems, and she is in a
continuous "antennas-on-alert" book-selling mode. She self-published
this book and has been devoting all her life's energy to popularizing
the book, and taking it from city to city across the Continent, this
latest round starting in Victoria, B.C. After a bit of a
conversation, she decided to leave a review copy of her book for our
inspection, but it would probably have ended up in our Used Book
section if I hadn't decided to read it yesterday.

"Invoking the Light", is by any standard, a very attractive book,
thin and purple, in an even more lovely dustjacket, adorned with a
mystic symbol which she saw in a series of visions that led to her
spiritual discoveries. The sales page she left behind says this book
is "lightly debossed", but I have no idea what the heck that means, it
doesn't smell debossed or feel debossed. She didn't have to look very
far to find a publisher for this, her life's work. She didn't have to
twist any arms or prove that her title was saleable, because
PowerLight Enterprises is Catherine F. Reynolds, and Catherine F.
Reynolds is PowerLight Enterprises. She is another in a growing
battalion of self-published authors and her business card bears the
logo of the "IP" (Independent Publishers), along with the fact she won
"Honorable Mention" for her book, doubtless because of her ceaseless
efforts at book promotion. I wish I.P. used a different acronym,
"I.P.", "U.P", etc., it sounds like something done in a toilet. Why
don't people think even 2 seconds before selecting a stupid acronym?
"Independent Publishers" should just stand as Independent Publishers.
"I.P" is stupid. It's like Kentucky Fried Chicken morphing into
K.F.C., the person who thought of that is an idiot! Take away the
solid image of a good product and replace it with a mindless, non-
image-reminding dead acronym. Although my favorite complaint these
days is that Kinko's Copies is being turned into Fed Ex Copies by its
owner, Fed Ex who doesn't like the name Kinko's, I guess. IDIOTS!!
Thirty years of name recognition down the drain. What business did Fed
Ex have in buying Kinko's Copies in the first place?

Back to the Saga of Catherine
Reynolds

Catherine Reynolds has been trying to stop by each and every likely
establishment that features spiritual and metaphysical books. She
gives lectures and book signings all around the country, and has the
back of her vehicle piled high with a quantity of copies. I don't
know how many copies, but her gas mileage improves as she drops off or
sells more and more of her load of books in the various stores along
the way. Agreeing to make an appearance and a book-signing works much
better than hoping a store manager will meet her "cold", as a "walk-
in", and agree to carry a dozen copies of her title. The life of a
writer who drives from state to state peddling her wares is more
dreary than it is romantic. I know that when I operated a bookstore
authors would stop by in hopes that I'd buy some copies of their
books, but I seldom bought even one copy, since it was unlikely I
would ever be able to sell this self-published stuff to a general
public that had never heard of the title or author. One exception is
when the author of a wonderfully meaty, thick, paperback book on
forensic palmistry came in unexpectedly on her tour of the Bay Area, I
jumped to get one $15 copy of that book, but no way was I going to
shell out $150 to buy 10 copies as the budding author asked me to
do. Sure, I would have asked the suggested retail of $25 each, and
after selling 6 of the 10 copies, had my money back, and every copy
after that would have been pure profit. But it was more likely that
my struggling bookstore would go broke before I sold even 2 or 3
copies at $25. Right now a copy of this same palmistry book turned-
up at Metaphysics World. The owner had priced it at $15 or $16. Why
would someone buy these books at $25 when copies exist for quite a bit
less? This current title is a little gem and it looks like people
are holding onto their copies, they're not appearing on too many used
& rare book shelves yet, it isn't like a First by Anne Rice or
Stephen King. And the path of Reynolds' travels can be seen in the
locations where her books are being offered right now. I am looking
on ABE right now and I see Reynolds' "Invoking the Light" out there,
right now: There are 4 copies for sale in the world, in a fairly
tight range between $33.91 and $39.05. Copies exist at Selene Books
in Cambridge, England and at Powell's Books in Oregon to the Aussie
Book Seller in Mascot, New South Wales. Coas Books in Las Cruces has
the other American copy that's on the market right now, at $34.95.
This leads me to believe she has been the Pacific Northwest, and
American Southwest, Australia and the United Kingdom with her books
but for some reason California and the American East and Midwest are
still virgin territories for her charms. It is not an easy life,
this traveling from town to town, ever on the lookout for possible
book venues. Some store owners or managers cagily make acceptance of
her book on their shelves dependent on how many people she can lure to
come in for her lectures and book-signings, and some make her go
through the motions of setting-up to do a book signing well in
advance, requiring travel and an overnight in some distant town, and
then, even with a good turn-out to the event, the manager or owner
decides against carrying her book. I believe this is a self-
protective act on the part of booksellers who would otherwise be in
grave peril, unless they are independent millionaires, as a deluge of
copies of books that authors have self-published topple down on top of
them from all these visiting authors, titles which big publishers
have repeatedly rejected. After all, what reason does a bookstore
owner have to carry a title that does NOT come from a large,
mainstream publisher, and by an author who is not generally known or
recognized?

There are at least two thousand authors at this moment who are
embarked on a personal crusade, trying to get bookstores,
distributors, and chains across North America to carry at least a few
copies of their books. This is much easier said than done. Years of
manuscript authorship and editing go to waste when a budding author
realizes nobody wants his book. Only a very, very few budding authors
have enough energy and wherewithal to carry the battle to the
individual bookstores, and only a very few of those will succeed.
There might easily be another Twain, another Tolstoy, another Nabokov,
Michener or Stephen King crossing the Bay Bridge right now, two of
them, going opposite directions, both en route to disappointing
receptions, one in Black Oak or Cody's, the other to City Lights or
Green Apple. But even with three hundred million residents in this
country, there aren't enough bookstores or bookbuyers to support the
needs of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of struggling self-
published authors. I think Reynolds may have a better idea by
starting with Australia and expanding to Canada and the U.K. and THEN
touring the U.S., from the Antipodes (New South Wales), and expanding
to other Commonwealth countries. And when you meet her, you do feel
she has been around, her energy is a kind of: "It's Wednesday, this
must be Tucson," energy.

All this preliminary jousting ultimately leads us to the question of
what special gift, what special insight, what level of writing does
Catherine F. Reynolds have to contribute to the world, and why her
$25 suggested price book is selling for $35 around the world in
countries where the local currency is worth more than the American
dollar is right now... possibly she is finding that selling a mystic
title in the U.S. is hard sledding during an economic downtown, and
the suggested retail price has to be reduced. Lower price means
higher sales. Even so, $25 a copy is plenty of money, or that's what
I felt as I gazed at her little mystic title in front of me.

This Spiritual Book, In & Of
Itself

At first I thought this would surely be a channeled book, but I was
very glad to see that she 'wrote it straight', without resorting to
any invisible helpers, though she does tell the story a little bit
from 'on high' because one of her desires was to keep the material
easy and accessible to anyone and everyone, so the way she tells the
story gives the faint impression of looking down from a high
promontory. Her efforts are in keeping with many channeled authors
whose words and phrases appear in almost painfully clean, clear, prose
-- the better to bring religious and inspirational books down to the
same basic, unmistakably plain level as childrens' books. This pains
me, however, because I never know if these very intelligent authors
are simplifying things for my sake, or if they think in basic and
simple ways using easy and simple terms.

Let me describe the topography of her book. There is no index, and
there are no references or bibliography, since this is a personal
document of one's spiritual discovery. The book is eminently
readable. Every page has generous margins. The type is 13 or 14
points in size so there are about 10 words per line, with about 19 to
22 lines per page, and there are 91 pages in total, which includes a
ten page introduction, so the total word-count must be about 90 x 20
x 10 = 18,000 words, or about a fifth as much text as a typical
hardcover book. Actually, there are six empty pages and pages with
section heads so the text is really only 16,800 words. But the author
wasn't going for breadth or verbage, she was going for depth and
esoteric meaning and spiritual inspiration here. I am reminded that
there are some really silly examples of "inspirational" books "out
there" that don't even have 1,000 words in the whole book, but these
books were written by idiots and marketed toward bigger idiots. But
Catherine Reynolds is no idiot, her book starts out simple, then
becomes more and more dense and complex as the metaphysical world of
"projected" human beings, in the sway of both Light and Darkness,
comes to light. Suddenly we are aware that we are in the midst of a
Gnostic document that could have been written by one of those Desert
Fathers on the edge of the Holy Land, and wrapped up as a scroll, a
Scroll of Light, perhaps eighteen hundred years ago. A book doesn't
have to be the King James version of the Bible to cover quite a bit of
spiritual ground, after all.

The story really begins when she was living in Australia and suffered
the death of her cat and then also her mother, both of them dear and
familiar friends, within a short period of time. She found herself
entering a tailspin of loneliness and gloom. Going up north to the
tropics and deep into Aboriginal territory, she found an inspiring,
liberating outdoors world. I think she was out in the heat a bit too
long, because when she closed her eyes she had a vision of a halo-
bordered greenish yellow circle with a cruciform four-pointed bright
yellow star in the middle, kind of like something you or I might see
if our Mind's Eye was talking to us and we were physically exhausted.
But, curiously, this same vision was repeated twice later, weeks or
months apart. The first thing I thought of was that perhaps she had
an actual physical malady of some kind, but this doesn't seem to have
been the case. Unfortunately Reynolds doesn't relate very clearly how
this particular vision tied-in with her experimentation with various
affirmations around about that same time, because she leaves this
vision as merely anecdotal and separate from the spiritual quest which
followed,. and this repeated vision of a kind of cat's eye led to her
various affirmations and other spiritual practices. It was one of her
affirmations that she felt lifted her into a mystic state of mind.
Not a safe and secure place, because despite the on-going affirmations
she was making, for a long, long time she felt burdened with
negativity and temptation. But finally the repetition of this
affirmation -- doing much the same thing as a mantra does when
employed by a South Asian sect -- began to heal and repair and
inspire her, though there remains a lingering worry that as far as the
initial vision of the 4-pointed star-in-a-green-aura'd eyeball of
light there wasn't necessarily anything particularly spiritual going
on -- she may have just been seeing things!

Interestingly enough, one can't affirm and bring in "The Light" from
"Above" without a struggle with the forces from below. Because now
come the Powers of Darkness, because one of the things that was
revealed to her under the influence of this repeated affirmation was
the fact that there are Dark Powers and they emanate from a Source of
Darkness, and although she doesn't name this Source of Darkness, it is
the antithesis of the Creator God whom, she says, is also the Light-
bringing God. She doesn't call it Satan, specifically, but that's
where the book is headed. This book is alive with Gnosticism in her
special knowledge about the on-going dualistic battle going on between
the Power of the Light and the Power of the Darkness.

According to what she has figured out, the Power of the Light created
the world and is stronger than the Power of the Darkness. Furthermore,
all the darkness will eventually be reincorporated within the light.
Invisible angels from the Light, as well as different kinds of angels
(demons, demonesses, etc.), from the Dark are "assigned" to us, and
follow us around. I hope they turn away when doing certain things! We
can choose the angels of the Light or those of the Dark, as if our
decision is not contrived or set-up by the Powers. The author
skillfully avoids the question of why Darkness was allowed by the
Power of Light to achieve this balance of energies. What's in it for
the Power of Light to have set-up this opposing Power of Darkness and
to subject humans, and other beings, to the titanic struggle between
these energies. Sorry, I just don't get it! If the Power of Light is
worthy of our trying to attain to it, why did it create evil, or allow
evil to be created?

"God, the Source of The Light, wishes the best for us, always."
Yeah, right!

Catherine's book starts with the sudden deaths of her 15 year old cat
and also her mother. They struck her just like Gautama Buddha was
suddenly struck with the evils of this life. So, I am asking her:
what is the point of the Light Being creating all these little beings
(including ourselves), and allowing some to get smacked with disaster
now, and some later? Sooner or later everything we've had, done, and
worked for is swept away by the tides of time and change. And why is
it people supposedly get to choose good, or evil, amidst this swirling
chaos? Without an answer to this question, the book and the system it
conveys, are just another seemingly hopeful ray of light from what
may well be the higher source advertised, but this 'light ray' cannot
completely penetrate the layers of darkness which hangs over the land
of this planet. And because of that, it is a little less than just
the light of a single candle. Even if she sells a million copies,
remember, this is a place where the lives of the Saints are turned
into soap-operas and where Jesus loses the battle to Jehovah or Kronos
or Satan and ends up, hung-up on a cross for all to see, not the
symbol for a heaven ahead of us nearly so much as the symbol of how
easy it is to get shafted and lose one's life on this hard-baked
planet.

I don't know how 'kosher' it is for me to tell you the daily
affirmation which she hit-upon that had such a profound effect on her
life, but suffice it to say, it is there in a large clear typeface in
the middle of her book.

"I invoke God's grace, which fills me with Light. Light dissolves all
darkness."

Yes, that's an apt phrase, an apt little prayer! It is as simple a
prayer as one could devise. It is lots simpler and more up-to-date
than the Lord's Prayer, and no particular brand of religion is
necessary, here, no sudden belief in God the Father or Jesus the
Son, or Mary, the "mother of God." It is universal as all get-out!
But it still sounds like one little candle-flame flickering in the
darkness. If you take away this invocation of the light, which the
whole book has been building and building up to, there isn't too much
of "Invoking the Light" that's left. Marcion or Valentinus in their
living 2nd or 3rd Century Gnosticism would have put a little more
meat on the table. It seems we are "projections" from the Divine
Light, that's the physics of how come our bodies and the whole world
consists mostly of nothing but empty space, into a realm of both
Light and Darkness, which struggle with each other over the souls of
humans. All very odd, to be sure. This continues to puzzle. Sure it
sounds simple: If we invoke the Light, we get angelic beings, which
are always with us, always looking on, coming more into the
foreground, protecting us. Unless the existence of both good and
evil entities is illusory and we are really alone here with the
projections of our own minds. But she writes:

"To acknowledge and welcome the benevolent support of your Companion
Light Beings, recite the following invocation three times:"

So there are mild and easy prayers here, magic prayers. The angels
(Light Beings) are welcomed as supportive companions because they
dispel the Beings of Darkness, which I guess are like those little
devils that sit on our shoulder and whisper naughty or discouraging
things in our ears. Without invoking the Light, it is easier for
those little "demon voices" to lull us or tempt us or destroy us. Of
course there are demons. I remember being nine years old in a "5 and
10 cent store" on Stevens Creek Road, in an obscure crowded little
aisle, with nobody paying the slightest attention to me, and I saw a
beautiful plastic bag with multi-colored marbles. Even then, at the
age of nine, it was as if I heard a little voice whispering , "go
ahead and put the bag of marbles in your pocket, nobody will ever
know!" Well, half a century has gone by, and now YOU know! So giving
in to temptation sometimes comes out, in the end. That little demon
with its demon temptations has just been slapped down, a few years
'after the fact!' But why does God allow these little demons to be
in a position to whisper temptations -- even to innocent young
children? There is something not quite FAIR about how 'the whole
thing' is set-up, wouldn't you agree? It makes you wonder who's
really in charge. Even the Christians readily admit the Devil is the
God of this World, and everyday experiences and the world and local
news makes this seem more and more likely. After all, there are many
Biblical examples of cruel and murderous doings that can all be put on
Jehovah's doorstep. At the dawn of the Biblical age, human
sacrifices, then animal sacrifices, were still going on. Jehovah
walked and talked with Satan in the Book of Job, and the first pep-
talk and major encouragement that Jesus got in his ministry was by the
Devil who took him up to a high place and showed him all the world and
said, "All this I will give you," or words to that effect. So the
Bible kind of pictorially illustrates that God is remotely up in
heaven somewhere, truly the Gnostic image of the distant other-worldly
God, but the Devil is offering terms and conditions to the very Son of
God down here in the terrestrial realm. So, no wonder a nine-year old
boy could be tempted to steal marbles as well, on a planet like this!

Catherine Reynolds has hit upon the need for prayer, a simple prayer,
at that. She calls upon God's grace, which I guess is like asking for
God's mercy. It could just as well be: "Dear God, save me from these
evil demons and temptations, fill me with your light! Allow me to
take the higher path, don't let me get bogged-down here on a power-
trip or embedded in a task of daily earthly survival and propagation.
Allow me to be more spiritual. Amen!" I would add to this: "If you
ever want to tell me why you decided to create all this hub-bub, this
on-going battle between Light and Darkness, in which everyone ends up
dead or miserable, sooner or later, I am waiting!" But we, as
souls, fell from God many ages ago and the spark of Light within us
must struggle to return, --struggle even to hear the very distant
voice of God from down here in this region! Such is the Word of
Gnosis. The author of the book I'm reviewing insists Light is at
hand, Light is everywhere, Light can be conjured-up along with all
the Light Beings, i.e., Angels of Light. Well, if a person can get
even five minutes' worth of Light from this book or this prayer every
so often, then it is $25 well-spent to be able to do so.

What Catherine could go on and say, but doesn't, is that this realm
is a half-way-house between Heaven and Hell. That's why it has both
angels and demons who are fighting over us, each side insisting we
choose which direction we want to go. It sounds like the semi-
biblical notion of a purgatory, a limbo. The Buddhists have this same
notion, though I don't think Muslims or Jews do. Make the right move,
you may be blessed, you may escape from the "Wheel of Rebirth". Make
the wrong move, or fail to pro-actively do anything at all, and sheer
inertia coupled with one's passions, one's mindless friends and
family, the media, and gravity and time itself, will drag you farther
and farther down until you'd swear you're literally in the Land of the
Fire Demons.

Ms. Reynolds is a very attractive woman, although she was made-up and
attired casually for driving around town and country, not going out or
giving a lecture or doing a book-signing. I fell for her on-the-spot,
but regretted that our conversation was necessarily limited to talking
about how to get from here to the next likely bookstore where she
might sell a book or two, making an in-depth conversation about
spiritual matters impossible. Within moments of her arrival, she was
off again on her merry way of bringing this, her light-filled life's
work, to bookstores and readers from Nogales, down on the border, up
to the rim of the Grand Canyon, 500 miles to the north, and everywhere
inbetween, especially Phoenix and Sedona. Well, if she survives
Phoenix, that big vaccuum cleaner that sucks spiritual energy down
into its hellish-hot vortex, she'll be lucky. At least in upscale
Sedona, perched in cleaner air up at a 4,500 foot altitude, many other
world-traveling spirit-seekers will have enough money to buy a copy or
two of "Invoking the Light". Maybe the whole cross-country odyssey
will pay for itself, but I doubt it. Gone are the days when spiritual
seekers could tromp around from town to town in their sandals,
evidently not having to work, not having to sell any books or scrolls,
just picking up disciples from among the fishermen.

My favorite part of the book is how she was walking down a tree-shaded
path in Mossman Gorge toward the river and "one white and one spotted
piglet" crossed her path. I am glad to say, this book is not the "big
boar" (bore) that must've followed the two little piglets, it is
never hard to read, it is always measured and thoughtful. It is quite
readable. It is not bore-ing or boar-ing at all. She is not nearly
so sentimental or silly as many other New Age authors, and I can't get
over how much I appreciate the fact that she doesn't credit some
alien, unseen, or ancient intelligence with the wisdom she herself
discovered and which her book contains, although obviously all that
LIGHT she feels she's INVOKING must be what's causing her to do some
traveling and preaching from town to town -- hey! Even Jesus did
that! Now if she could only get some DISCIPLES to help her....

Best, ----e.a.
http://stores.lulu.com/edaugusts <------ don't just sit there, buy
something!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASTRO_PSYCHIC/